Walter Dexter (1876–1958) remains one of the most distinctive artists to emerge from West Norfolk. His paintings, illustrations, and writings offer not only a personal vision of landscape but also a record of a vanished Lynn. Though he lived modestly and worked far from the great metropolitan art circles, Dexter’s life was one of steady dedication to art, education, and community.
Walter Dexter: Early Life and Formation
Born on 12 June 1876 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, Walter Dexter was the son of Walter Sothern Dexter, a photographic artist. The family soon returned to their native King’s Lynn, where young Walter was educated locally, probably at Croads School. His earliest lessons in art came from Henry Baines (1823–1894), the much-loved painter of Lynn’s riverside and parks. That local grounding would prove decisive: Dexter inherited from Baines an instinctive appreciation for the ordinary scenes and quiet light of Norfolk.
In 1892, at the age of sixteen, he entered the Birmingham School of Art, then one of the leading art institutions outside London. For five years he absorbed rigorous training in drawing, design, and painting, before extending his studies on the Continent. Time spent in Belgium and Holland exposed him to the tonal realism and atmosphere of European painting, influences that would later surface in his mature watercolours.
Walter Dexter: A Working Artist in Lynn
On returning to King’s Lynn, Dexter combined his art with an active role in civic life. His early career was marked by versatility: he painted in both oil and watercolour, and produced commercial illustrations and posters. He also contributed regular columns to the East Anglian Evening News and the Eastern Daily Press, often reflecting on local customs and Norfolk life.
His best-known painting, The Carpenter’s Workshop (1904), typifies his quiet realism: a scene of domestic labour rendered with warmth, patience, and fidelity. Yet his output was much broader. He painted still lifes, river scenes, portraits, and the narrow lanes and wharves of Lynn with equal assurance. His View from West Lynn and Custom House, King’s Lynn preserve the town’s pre-war skyline with an almost documentary precision, recording places later altered beyond recognition.
Dexter’s approach was one of measured realism, shaped by the English naturalist tradition. He preferred light to drama, atmosphere to spectacle. His skies and waterways shimmer with subtle gradations of tone, and his figures are observed without sentimentality. He once remarked that the artist’s task was “to see what is near,” and his work reflects that conviction.
Walter Dexter: Teaching and Artistic Leadership
For much of his life Dexter balanced painting with teaching. Between 1916 and 1920 he served as art master at Bolton Grammar School, before returning to King’s Lynn to teach at King Edward VII Grammar School during the Second World War (1941–1944). His pupils remembered him as patient and exacting, more interested in developing observation than in technique for its own sake.
He was also a pillar of the region’s artistic life. From 1902 to 1955 he was an active member of the Norfolk and Norwich Art Circle, exhibiting alongside Alfred Munnings and Edward Seago. In 1945 he became the founding president of the King’s Lynn Art Club, where he encouraged younger artists to take the local landscape as a subject worthy of serious attention. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA).
Walter Dexter: A Modest and Unconventional Life
In 1915 Dexter married Helen Chadwick, the daughter of a house decorator. The couple had no children and lived simply, first in the Toll Cottage at East Winch, later at the Valiant Sailor on Nelson Street, and for a period on a converted fishing boat moored on the River Nar. Helen was active in the Rationalist Press Association and held progressive views unusual for the time. Their shared independence and quiet scepticism set them somewhat apart from conventional Lynn society.
These years of modest living seem to have deepened rather than diminished Dexter’s engagement with his surroundings. He painted daily, often walking out along the Great Ouse or setting up his easel near the town’s creeks and bridges. His affection for the commonplace—the worn brick, the quiet water, the slow movement of clouds—became the signature of his art.
Walter Dexter: Death and Commemoration
Dexter’s life ended suddenly on 12 February 1958 when he was struck by a motorcyclist in the Saturday Market Place, King’s Lynn. He died two days later, aged 82. Though he had few close relatives, his funeral drew many from the local art community. He was buried at East Winch, where a former schoolmistress later arranged a memorial tablet outside the church’s east window.
His contribution to East Anglian art was celebrated fifty years later, in 2008, with a retrospective exhibition at the Fermoy Gallery, King’s Lynn. The show brought together works from private collections and local institutions, demonstrating the breadth of his talent and the constancy of his vision. In 2024, a 1936 painting of the Custom House was repatriated to the town, a fitting gesture of recognition for an artist who had given Lynn so much of its visual memory.
Why Walter Dexter Matters
Dexter’s importance lies in his fidelity to place. His paintings are both aesthetic works and historical records, preserving scenes of Lynn and its hinterland before modern change. As a teacher, he helped shape local art education, and as a writer and illustrator he brought Norfolk life to a wider audience.
Despite his skill, Dexter remains underrepresented in national collections, overshadowed by contemporaries who courted London’s galleries. Yet among those who know his work, there is an enduring respect for his quiet mastery. He was an artist who worked where he lived and lived by what he saw.
Footnote: While teaching at Lynn Grammar School Dexter would probably have encountered a certain Maurice Micklewhite – Sir Michael Caine – who had been evacuated from London. See HERE.
© James Rye 2025
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Further Reading
- Exhibition Catalogue, Walter Dexter RBA (1876–1958), Fermoy Gallery, King’s Lynn
- James, E. (1985) Norfolk and Norwich Art Circle: A History, Circle
- Lynn News (2021) https://www.lynnnews.co.uk/news/archivist-provides-answers-to-lost-art-and-links-to-a-famous-9209246/
- Paton, C. (2014) A Portrait of Walter Dexter, Larks Press